


The Boy With Half A Soul

by Ben_Solo_Good_Boy_Sweater_Emporium



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, F/M, One Shot, One True Pairing, Romance, Sad with a Happy Ending, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:54:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23878756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ben_Solo_Good_Boy_Sweater_Emporium/pseuds/Ben_Solo_Good_Boy_Sweater_Emporium
Summary: "She might have appeared to be just a lowly peasant girl to eyes that did not yet know how to see more deeply. But those with only half a soul, those who see through eyes of fire and are wreathed in ancient magics, those who hide their sorrows behind masks of blackest coal…they see the world a little differently than you, or than I."A Brothers Grimm-inspired SW tale.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 5
Kudos: 44





	The Boy With Half A Soul

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to drown my Ben Solo sorrows by reading Philip Pullman's "Fairy Tales From the Brothers Grimm." This is the result.

A long time ago, in a kingdom far, far away, lived a strong and beautiful princess. The princess was beloved of all who knew her, brave and wise. She had led a rebellion against the wicked old sorcerer who last ruled the kingdom, one that had driven him from his throne. Everyone rejoiced to think the sorcerer had died, but he had not, and that is where our story begins.

Now this princess had taken a handsome and strong-willed husband, and soon expected her first child. But her sleep was troubled by frightening dreams, and she feared for the babe in her womb. The people of her kingdom might believe that peace and happiness were now theirs, but the princess, young as she was, knew better. She understood that darkness is not so easily vanquished, and has a habit of closing back in when you most wish you were done with it forever.

The kingdom held its breath in anticipation, until the princess was brought to bed and delivered of a fine and healthy son. His hair was rich as spun silk. His eyes seemed filled with the wisdom of the ages. And all around him, the princess could sense an ancient magic, spiraling and grasping like tendrils of ivy. It terrified and delighted her to imagine how powerful a man her child would grow to be.

The princess had a twin brother, a magician in his own right. He wanted to take the child away and raise him as a warrior priest to defend the kingdom. The princess refused. She could no more give up her own precious baby than she could take the beating heart from her chest. But the haunting dreams would not subside. Worse, they seemed to flow into her darling babe with her own mother’s milk, until he screamed and thrashed every night.

The boy’s father was a general in his wife’s army. He loved her dearly, and made no secret of his enjoyment of their marital bed. He understood battle, and commerce, and other realities of everyday living. But the child left him befuddled and uneasy. Simple and pragmatic as he was, he shied away from the spirals of energy radiating from the royal nursery. More and more, he avoided visiting altogether. It tore the princess’s heart to see this estrangement growing in her young family.

She decided to consult a wise woman who lived on the farthest border of her kingdom. Tiny and wrinkled, the woman seemed a thousand years old, but her eyes were warm and kind. The old sage took the baby in her arms, examined him closely, and made a dreadful pronouncement.

_This child has but half a soul._

What could such a thing mean? How could anyone be born without a soul, whole and complete? The princess was at a loss to understand. The sage could only describe what she saw. She could offer no solution to the problem. Old as she was, she had never encountered a half-person before. The princess decided to bring the child home, and tell no one of his decidedly peculiar condition.

Ten years passed. The royal baby grew into a tall, intelligent boy. His face was a curious blend of his beautiful mother and handsome father, which somehow managed to look like both and neither. He was studious and quiet, a well-behaved child for the most part. But he had a will of iron that sometimes revealed itself in a spectacular temper. The princess tried to raise him rightly, though her husband was often away on campaigns outside her realm, and she herself was extremely taxed ruling the kingdom.

Now the princess never spoke to anyone of her son’s half-soul, least of all the boy himself. In truth, he would not have understood what she meant had she tried. But he did know that he was desperately lonely. The royal marriage produced no other children, far-removed as its two associates often were. The boy knew himself to be the cause of this estrangement. He had no other children his own age to play with, no real friends to speak of. Even the servants seemed to find him strange and gave him—and his changeable temper—a wide berth.

The young prince was quiet and bookish by nature. He loved nothing better than to scribe a steady line with a fine-nibbed pen. Secretly, he longed to join his dashing father in all his dangerous exploits. He felt certain that if only he were given the chance, he could convince his father to love him, or at least to stop hating him so much that he never returned home to the palace.

All this time, unbeknownst to the princess, the wicked sorcerer was regaining strength and marshalling the forces of darkness against her. Driven by a burning thirst for revenge, the cunning old conjurer recognized there was no greater hurt he could do the princess than to injure her beloved child. So he slithered under the doors and slunk in with the shadows, clouding the boy’s mind and slowly poisoning his stout young spirit.

Just as the dark wizard whispered into the boy’s ear, so did the light wizard whisper into his mother’s. Her twin brother visited the kingdom often, trying to persuade the princess to give her powerful offspring into his keeping. Though he believed his own intentions to be just, still he played on her fears of the future. The princess trusted her magician brother, and without her husband to counsel her, soon came to doubt her own ability to raise the boy well. Though she could never have believed it of herself when her precious baby was born, she at last agreed to send him away in her brother’s charge.

Then one day, a most curious event took place. As the boy was packing his few things to leave the only home he had ever known, sad and angry to be sent away, he felt a sudden brightness flare in his heart. The air seemed warmer, the colors of his room somehow richer. He heard a kind of music for which he could not otherwise account. His mother had summoned the old wise woman to the palace, to examine her son one final time before his departure. The sage took one look at the boy and whispered to his mother that his condition had now changed.

_This child has a whole soul after all, but half of it is lost. He needs to journey into the unknown and find it, if he is ever to be happy._

Well, thought the princess, perhaps it _is_ the right thing to send him away. If what the boy needed was outside her realm, it would be abominable of her to keep him close. At least, that is what a sorrowing mother told her breaking heart.

For thirteen long and thankless years, the boy toiled as apprentice to his uncle. While the white magician meant no ill, and cared for the boy in his own way, he was a strict and distant master. He chastised the young man for the ingratitude of his grief, punished any outbursts of passion, and urged him to forget the life of comfort from which he was taken. The reward for his service was to be a vow of lifelong purity and obedience.

As he had grown up a prince, the young man understood the difference between public feelings and private ones. To all outward appearances, he was generally polite and submissive. But the tiny embers of his resentment grew into larger and larger flames every day, until he was certain that his eyes must shine red from the inside out.

The wicked old sorcerer, still plotting and planning and hissing in corners, used the boy’s own feelings against him. Each night he filled his nightmares not just with monsters, but with memories twisted to make it seem that the royal couple had never loved him, never wanted him.

But for all his frailties, the young man had a naturally loving heart. He fought against the cunning lies, fought against his own anger and sadness, fought even to care for his aloof uncle. For every inch he grew taller, so too the ancient magic inside him stretched and swelled. The music was always with him, too, a familiar friend that grew louder in times of trial. He wrapped it around himself like a warm woolen cloak on a winter’s day, and it gave him courage when he was afraid.

The tricksy old sorcerer would not be denied so easily. Furious to be thwarted by so trifling a thing as a young man’s loving heart, he focused instead on plaguing the white magician. The older man secretly feared that his own abilities as a teacher were not up to the challenge of taming the boy’s immense power. The wicked sorcerer crooned silent words of resentment and bitterness. How dare such an ignorant child not show unquestioning obedience? Did he fancy himself the equal—nay, the superior—of his more renowned and talented uncle?

These black seeds took root, and flourished in the most ignoble corners of the white magician’s heart. On a cold and stormy night, waking from a false dream that foretold his own doom at his nephew’s hands, he snuck into his apprentice’s room and attempted to cut him down as he slept. The younger man awoke in terror, defended himself against his crazed and bewitched uncle, and fled into the night.

Imagine yourself, if you can, in this boy’s place. Taken from his home, abandoned by parents whose love went unspoken, betrayed by an uncle he served without complaint for more than half his life. No one ever told him about the wicked old sorcerer intent on destroying his family. Nor did his mother ever explain the curious cleaved condition of his soul.

Is it any wonder, then, that the young man fell into despair, that he stopped trying to contain the conflagration burning ever brighter inside him? He soon found himself bound to a new master, a monstrous creature more vicious and brutal than he could ever have imagined. And unbeknownst to him, this creature was a secret vassal of the wicked conjurer, who at last could use the boy for evil, even against his own beloved mother.

Seven more years passed. The lost prince was now a man in body, but so lonely and broken that he seemed more a child in spirit. The enormity of his magic was matched only by the sorrow and fury of his heart. He had always been obedient, had he not? Tried his very best to do and be whatever those in authority over him had demanded? How had his life come to this? To hide his rage and shame from the world, the young man hid his fine face away behind a hideous and terrifying black mask.

Then one day, his monstrous master bade him venture deep into a faraway forest and find a hidden treasure map. To reach its darkest glen, the man in the mask had to pass by an inn kept by the old wise woman. She saw through his disguise. Indeed, she was waiting for him to arrive. For she knew that the real treasure he sought, without even knowing it, was waiting for him there. The other half of his soul was hiding in the wood, in the form of a peasant girl.

Or at least, she might have appeared to be just a lowly peasant girl to eyes that did not yet know how to see more deeply. But those with only half a soul, those who see through eyes of fire and are wreathed in ancient magics, those who hide their sorrows behind masks of blackest coal…they see the world a little differently than you, or than I.

So the man in the mask knew straight away that this girl was like him. The music that had followed him, faithful and true, since he was a small boy, was coming from her. She hummed along with its tune, as she could hear it, too. The very same magic that filled him up like smoke, burst from her like light. But the magics were the same.

 _Is it you?_ she asked at once.

 _I’m sorry?_ The young man answered politely, for he had not forgotten his princely manners. _Do I know you, maiden?_

_Pardon me, my lord, but I think you must. The old sage who keeps the inn over yonder told me that you have half my soul, and I have half of yours. Or, to be more precise, she said that if I waited in this glen, the one who has half my soul would come and find me here. So I really think it must be you._

That made more sense to the young man than you might expect. And perhaps he would not have objected regardless. The peasant girl was really very pretty.

 _How can such things be, do you think?_ she asked. _How can I hold half your soul, and you half of mine, when we have never met?_

 _I don’t know,_ he answered honestly. _Perhaps we have only one soul between us, and all this time we have only been sharing it._

So the girl took his hand, and he took hers, and together they left the darkness. The hideous and terrifying mask, they left behind them.

They went on to have many glorious and thrilling adventures together, slaying the monstrous creature and later the wicked old sorcerer. Eventually they returned to the young man’s home, where he found his mother and father and uncle, too, all searching the four corners of the kingdom, high and low, to find him. They all begged his forgiveness for their mistreatments of him and he, who still had a naturally loving heart, forgave them.

And when he was older he became the king, as was his right, with his beautiful queen seated by his side. They had always to stay very close together, sharing as they did a single soul.

But the one thing you must remember, for this is really the most important part, is that the boy who once had half a soul healed, and loved, and was loved deeply in return.

And lived happily ever after.


End file.
